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Mo Fanning - British writer and comic

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Diary

5 ways to be a greener writer

November 3, 2021 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

Climate change

Little by little. Baby step by baby step. The world is catching on to the need to stop doing things that will probably end life on this planet within the next couple of hundred years.

Our eco-unfriendly actions continue to cause a gradual melting of Polar ice. This will create a much wetter stratosphere. That will mean the removal of vital gases that support not just human life, but crops and everything we need to survive. As this ice melts, we won’t simply see dystopian floods taking out New York and London. Instead, the difference between the equator and the two poles will disappear along with us.

As a writer, I believe I use very little of the world’s resources. But I know even in that part of my world, I can create a more sustainable, low waste lifestyle. It’s not as easy as just reducing how much meat I eat or recycling plastic bottles. I gradually noticed how I was needing to empty the trash bin on my office floor two or three times a week. Mostly because I have an insatiable Amazon habit (it’s my way of procrastinating). Everything they send comes wrapped in many layers of paper and plastic. I am making made a personal commitment to produce as little rubbish in my writing life as possible—by which I don’t mean cutting back the florid descriptions and infeasibly complex plot points.

Here are five tips to start you off.

Greener pencils and notepads

Recyled pencil is greenerPencils last longer than pens, are easier to work with (erasers work wonders) and when I’m short on ideas, somehow my doodles just look better. With an aluminium pencil sharper rather than a plastic one, a few pencils will keep me going for a year. I recently found recycled pencils: mine used to be a newspaper.

When I need to take notes, I open up an email, write my notes (or dictate them) and hit save as draft. BUT for when only paper will do, avoid plastic covers, aim for recycled notebooks. And use every page, back and front. Obviously there is a lunatic fringe that will use pencil and then erase the lot for second use. I’m not there yet. I do, however, use junk mail envelopes for notepaper. For my next book, Guide Dogs for the Blind have contributed almost every scene card.

Greener energy saving devices

LED light bulbs offer the same amount of light as regular ones, but use 40% less energy. And yes, they cost a bit more, but they last longer too. If you can, try setting up your desk in front of a window and make use of natural light. A smart power strip detects when you’re not using your plugged in electronics and automatically turns them off. When something is out of use, don’t leave it on standby. Pull the plugs on traditional power strips even if everything they connect to is turned off, the strip still consumes tiny bits of power. I always smugly set up screensavers in the past, but then someone pointed out how that’s still using unnecessary electricity and consuming energy that’s going to waste. I changed my settings so my machine automatically goes into hibernation or sleep mode when not active.

Ebooks

I totally get how there’s a cost to storing each bite of data online. I strongly support a digital-first policy for publishers. An ebook doesn’t eat up the same amount of physical resources as printed novel and there are lower costs of transmission.

Paper and e-readers produce different kinds of pollution and waste. With readers, the main pollutant is the manufacture of the battery and the screen. Paper pulp mills contribute to air, water and land pollution. Even paper recycling can be a source of pollution due to the sludge produced during de-inking. Our landfills are composed of about 26% paper, and the publishing industry consumes about 11% of freshwater consumed in industrial nations.

I decided to only buy ebooks from now on. My back catalogue will increasingly be only available in digital format—and bonus, that’s an ISBN number you don’t have to buy and register if you self publish.

Don’t upgrade your tech

Recycle technologyStick with your (working) tech Resist the upgrade. Until you really need it, does it matter if Scrivner is slow to open or you have to sip your coffee before Word is up and running?

Technowaste is a massive problem. Use your old tools until they drop—and then dispose of them responsibly—if that old tablet you bought the kids will run your editing software but not connect online, that’s even better. There’s less to distract you. And any new machine always comes with a learning curve as you get it to work how you want. That’s time you could be writing.

A faster laptop won’t make your books any better.

Don’t print

Don’t print unless you must: In the old carefree days, we thought nothing of meeting an agent request to print out 100,000 words double line-spaced one-sided and mail the resulting bulk. Thankfully, most agents and publishers saw sense. But as writers we need to do the same. Most of us hate printing, and the energy spent swearing at a printer that refuses to connect or snarls up sheet after sheet is avoidable if you don’t use it. I edit on screen or better on my Kindle app. As long as I get to see text in a different medium to one in which I wrote, it helps. Often if that’s just exporting it from Word into a PDF, or using the read aloud function on most computers. If you need to print, use an ‘eco’ font—one that uses less ink and downsize as far as possible to reduce paper use. You don’t need Size 12 Times New Roman, double spaced, printed one size for your own use.

Filed Under: Diary, Writing Tagged With: COP26, Green, Publishing, Writing

Moving stress

November 2, 2021 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

Curtain twitching neighbour

Moving house is supposedly one of the more stressful things we put ourselves through. Add in one of those awful weekends life likes to chuck your way from time to time, and you have the recipe for Xanax.

As weekends go, the one that just ended was rubbish – even by my low standards. My husband broke down in a torrential downpour on a major motorway with no hard shoulder. One of these new fangled smart motorways that killed 38 people in the few years. My dog picked up a skin infection that is now costing an arm and a leg in mature cheese to disguise the crushed up pound-coin-sized antibiotics a sadistic (and now extremely well-off) vet prescribed. I dropped and broke three highly pressurised glass bottles of traditional lemonade (living the high life). You wouldn’t believe just how much mess that causes. And just how far the shards of glass will travel. And just how sharp they are when you sit on one. And how hard it is to administer a plaster to your rear that stays put.

To top it all, our soon-to-be ex-neighbour from hell decided to have one last go at sending me over the edge.

Neighbour from hell

When people talk neighbours from hell, they usually mean some antisocial creep who plays loud music, smokes way-too-much weed and/or smears windows with excrement. Or variations on those basic three themes. My appalling neighbour does none of this. He’s of the ‘nice to your face, vile behind your back’ sort. The kind of person who used to dominate the 90s gay scene.

Over eight years, he’s policed a dim, barnacled, smelly area of no-man’s-land between each flat in our ancient under-maintained building. The kind of place you could keep a prisoner of conscience secure in the knowledge they’d crack within hours and spill every secret. Our neighbour spends each and every waking hour making sure nobody dare set foot in this precious scrap of hell.

We wanted to make sure the space didn’t put off flat buyers. We came to an agreement with the people who own it to clean it up and fill it with plants.

Neighbour wasn’t pleased.

Usually, I’d be able to tell such a man to shove his displeasure firmly up his hoop. Sadly, he gets to say whether we can extend the years on our lease as we sell and get moving. I have to lap it all up. And rather than tell me to my face, how did he choose to announce his irritation? That’s right. By email. Through his solicitor.

Moving shame

Dear reader, I’m ashamed to say I threw myself on his mercy. I rammed my tongue so far up his rear end it came out of his mouth.

So far, the matter looks to be resolved, and it’s only cost an extra £1700 in legal fees to send a letter to five or six different people. Still, if it means we get on with moving house and away from this awful man …

Why am I telling you this? Because I want to set down what life in Britain is like in 2021. The NIMBY (Not in my back yard) culture that expects everything should run only for the benefit of those in power slides down even to my lowly level on the ladder. That and I want to make sure I don’t forget the details and the rage so I can use it in my next book.

And use it I will.

Filed Under: Anxiety, Diary, Stress Tagged With: Brighton, Diary, Moving House, Neighbours, stress

Beating an addiction helped process growing up an outsider

July 21, 2021 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

Drinking alone

Any recovery programe starts in the same way. You admit you have a problem and it consumes you. In my case, it was drink. It could easily have been any of my other self-destructive behaviour patterns, but as a starter for ten, my body decided to tackle an unfettered love of jar.

For every success story, there’s at least a thousand people ready to stick up their hands and say giving up didn’t work for them. The failure rate is depressing. Those who fail are happy to speak out. Like when you watch reality casting shows and whoever happens to be this month’s Simon Cowell-alike tells a room full of eager faces how most of them won’t have the X-factor.

So what does it feel like to be four years sober and consider yourself a success? I should add, the four-year part doesn’t matter. There’s strength in white-knuckling a single sober day.

There’s one thing of which I am sure. The decision to stop drinking saved my life.

Hangovers

For years, I refused to own my problem. I would drink. A lot. I’d have hangovers and dread facing people the next day. As a functioning alcoholic, my career highlights include: finding myself with no wallet in the middle of nowhere looking for a phone box to call my sleeping parents 200 miles away and ask if they can prepay a cab to get a 25-year-old me home. I’ve woken with two cracked ribs and a broken TV. I’ve found myself thrown from a cab in a foreign city covered in sick that might have been mine.

I stopped drinking much like I stopped smoking. One day it didn’t happen

Towards the end, my evenings always started the same. With the intention to limit myself to what was in the kitchen. Once I took the first sip, I couldn’t stop and wanted to keep going to that place where I got sociable and fun and brave enough to not hide away. I wanted to think nothing. Half way through any evening, I’d stumble to the nearest shop selling wine and slur my orders.

I stopped drinking much like I stopped smoking. One day it didn’t happen. The next day was the same.

It took a year of not taking a drink to deal with the dark cloud that had followed me around. Until I could do that, I was simply a guy who drank too much.

Bit by bit, I asked why I let myself get literally legless, lifting the lid of a box marked PRIVATE. I came face-to-face with the hurt of growing up an only child, with industrial grade acne, no friends, no self-confidence, a weight problem … and a preference for men. In each and every respect, I felt alone. Add them together and the feeling manifested as alcohol abuse in my adult life. I was singled out by the school playground bullies because I didn’t know how to fight back. I stood alone in bars and clubs on account of zero social skills. People didn’t bother getting to know me, because I hid away in shadows.

Drink corrected everything.

Numb

As I identified each cause, the effect lifted. A little each day … until I no longer was consumed by the desire to drink. I no longer needed to be numb.

I don’t call myself sober. I prefer to say I’m not drinking today. Mostly because it saves on the embarrassed silences when ‘fessing up to being a reformed booze bag – or the people who implore me to have just the one glass when I stay quiet.

I let myself have a drink. Because I trust that I know when and how to stop. And why. Drinking was no longer fun. The pain and anxiety that drove my love of the bottle added bubbles to my beer.

Of course, I’m not unique in this. Millions of us only drink once in a while. I have a penchant for an espresso Martini. But drinking is no longer a defined part of my life; something I do every day from 5pm until sleep takes over.

I’ve long been reluctant to write about this part of my life, even though I’ve published stories about recovery and made it the central theme of ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’. The thing is, I realise there are lots of drinkers like me. People who don’t accept their relationship with alcohol might be a problem. They’ll keep tumbling and hit new lows.

One of the best things I ever read is that you don’t have to hit rock-bottom to step out of the lift. You can stop self-sabotaging at any floor.

I was lucky. One day, drinking didn’t happen. I’m grateful it did. I’m grateful to Mark for making it so.


Moderation management
Moderation Management™ is a lay-led non-profit dedicated to reducing the harm caused by the misuse of alcohol. MM provides support through face-to-face meetings, video and phone meetings, chats, and private online support communities.

 

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Filed Under: Anxiety, Diary, Modern life is heck, Rebuilding Alexandra Small, Stress Tagged With: Alcoholism, Depression, Diary, Health, Mental Health, Recovery

Writing: How to decide on the story I want to tell

July 20, 2021 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

In the middle of promoting my recent book – Rebuilding Alexandra Small – (99p for the month of July at most eBook sellers) I’m also writing something new. It’s the weird way of the writing world that you truly want to put all your energy into a new project, but need to set a decent chunk of time aside to sell something that’s over a year old in your head.

I’m midway through the third draft of what I hope to share either later this year or early next and the story continues to twist and turn and bend into all kinds of new shapes. I was sure I knew what I wanted to say with this next novel, but it turns out I want to say more thing. With rebuilding Alexandra Small, I wanted to address recovery and making amends – and what happens when someone you forgot about sticks their head up and says ‘what about me?’ The central storyline deals with paying the price for not saying sorry.

For my (as yet untitled) work in progress, I have three key storylines. An older couple, a younger couple. A gay couple, a straight couple. Something nefarious involving the church. And it’s all set on a Christmas cruise to the Bahamas. I started with the focus firmly on one of the key players, allowing others occasional goes at speaking to the reader. Then I switched in the second draft, dividing time equally. It’s just dawned on me in the third draft, that my previous favourite character is actually quite safe. She takes few risks. She could even be called dull (but only by a close friend). And I wanted to explore why. It’s helped me focus the theme for the new book. One of the other key characters suffers from the weight of meeting expectations and feeling inadequate. Another struggles to make good for an impulsive argument that split his family. I thought I might have many things to say with this one, but now I see I have just one: being true to yourself comes with a cost, but it’s worth paying.

Pitching your writing

As a writer, it’s vital to distil your story into one or two lines. This lets you stay focussed on the end-game and kill any non-helpful darlings in the edit – taking out each and every fabulously written chunk of prose that fails to advance the story. Having this essence bottled makes it so much easier to talk about your book when you reach the marketing or pitch stage. It’s a way to be sure of meeting the expectations of your genre, your readers and that demanding inner critic – the one who keeps bleating on about imposter syndrome. For me, everything starts with one (or more) character(s). You might work differently.

I’ll aim to share some pages with my mailing list subscribers in the coming weeks. In the meantime, enjoy the sun. If you’ve never tried placing a bottle of frozen water in front of a table fan, do it now. You’ll thank me.

And if you can spare a pound/buck/yoyo, please buy an e-book this month. It’ll help make paying my mortgage that little bit easier.

Low cost ebooks

Filed Under: Diary, Rebuilding Alexandra Small, Tips, Writing Tagged With: Characterisation, Diary, Rebuilding Alexandra Small, Story, Tips, Writing

How was your lockdown?

July 7, 2021 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

Lockdown 2021

How was lockdown for you? Boris Johnson has released us into our own care. We’re free. And the government is free to stop having to pay their way out of a crisis and gets to blame us for any further deaths under the guise of personal responsibility. I suppose more than anything, I’d like a PM who doesn’t act like he might fail the ReCAPTCHA on an Internet contact form.

Rebuilding Alexandra SmallI’ll miss lockdown. It was like a series of duvet days. Combined with the fear of death. As an introvert, Corona was my Christmas. No more needing to make up surgery to get out of drinks after work. I was waiting for the perfect time to change my Netflix password so my ex couldn’t use it any more, and it doesn’t really get much better than a national lockdown. All those guys on Tinder who say they’re “5’10, if it matters” must be feeling pretty satisfied with everyone stuck at home so it…didn’t matter.

I always told myself I’d prepare for the inevitable apocalypse, but then got to thinking what if I succeeded and then had to spend eternity eating fox meat in an abandoned Toys R Us with the type of people who prepare for an apocalypse.

Coronavirus finally got men washing their hands after a piss. We’re literally two epidemics away from them learning how to wash their dicks.

There’s something about knowing that none of your friends are doing anything fun that feels good. Quitting drinking really prepared me for quarantine: it’s all about taking it one day at a time and never seeing your friends again.

Lockdown downsides

There were downsides. It’s hard to know if someone you care about is self-isolating or having a three day wankathon/Pornhub box set binge. I could no longer pretend to be out when people called, or end calls fast because I had to be somewhere. My life really wasn’t good enough for it to get drastically worse. I could no longer say for sure I was having a mid life crisis, given I could easily die within days. One time, I coughed in the queue at Sainsbury’s and four people turned round. It felt like I was on The Voice. I’ve started watching porn and making up dialogue. I stopped shaving and downgraded my skincare regime. The facial recognition on my phone insists on a password as proof.

I miss the office. It’s weird not having people around I leave passive aggressive notes when I don’t put mugs in the dishwasher. I’ve written my name on food in the fridge. Again it has an upside. No avoiding twats who want to get a team together to go on The Crystal Maze.

I’m going to come out of this a better person.

Filed Under: Diary, Modern life is heck, Stress Tagged With: COVID-19, Diary, Health

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About Mo Fanning

Mo Fanning (@mofanning) tells jokes on a stage and writes commercial fiction. He’s the bestselling author of The Armchair Bride and Rebuilding Alexandra Small. Mo makes fabulous tea – milk in last – and is a Society of Authors member and cancer bore.

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